Central Florida Played A Role In Bringing Tulane Into Big East

Text messages from Central Florida President John Hitt to Big East commissioner Mike Aresco show the school played a role in one of the league's more surprising moves.

Hitt sent a text message to Aresco about Tulane's interest in the Big East, according to records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

"Scott Cowen at Tulane wants to talk with me about possibilities for Tulane in the Big East. Scott is a friend. Will listen and then call you. John," Hitt wrote to Aresco on Nov. 18.

Aresco responded, "Great, John, their AD, Rick Dixon, is an old friend and he called this afternoon. They are extremely interested. This would be a big one for us, important market, great school academically, and Scott would be in our tent on the BCS revenue share matter we have to deal with as well as other things. He's a bulldog and very sharp. Keep me posted. Thanks, Mike."

The Big East announced on Nov. 27 that Tulane would join the conference in all sports in 2014, indicating that the move came together in just nine days.

The text messages were originally obtained by Orlando Sentinel reporters Jason Garcia and David Damron, who highlighted state leaders' deleting text messages they are required to keep in compliance with the state's open records laws.

The addition of Tulane reportedly set in motion the departure of the Catholic 7 basketball schools from the Big East. The decision to add Tulane was seen to be largely based around football revenue without consideration of its effect on a powerful basketball conference.

After Tulane was issued an invitation from the Big East, Marquette athletic director Larry Williams expressed his displeasure with the move during an interview on 540 ESPN radio in Milwaukee.

"I was not pleased that we issued an invitation to Tulane without any diligence to what effect that would have on our basketball product, the draw on our RPI and other such things," Williams said, according to reports. "I was disappointed that I wasn't able to participate as a member of the conference in the deliberation that went into adding that."

The Catholic 7 — Marquette, Georgetown, St. John's, Providence, Seton Hall, DePaul, and Villanova — announced their departure from the Big East on Dec. 15.

Text messages between Hitt and Aresco from September also showed that Hitt reached out to Florida President Bernie Machen regarding potentially persuading BYU to join the Big East.

"Pres. Machen will help with BYU, if asked," the text message from Sept. 13 read, in part.

Aresco responded that, "his help on BYU would be most welcome at the appropriate time."

Those September text messages also included discussions about bowl access.

Hitt earned a master's degree from Tulane in 1964 and a doctoral degree from the university in 1966, both in physiological psychology.

Although Tulane's addition to the Big East surprised many because of its relatively weak football and men's basketball programs, Cowen played a pivotal role in revamping the Bowl Championship Series format. Tulane posted an undefeated record in 1998, but the school didn't earn a BCS bowl invitation. Cowen lobbied to revamp the BCS system, helping trigger changes to the system that allowed teams from outside automatic qualifying conferences to earn at-large BCS bids and become BCS busters.

Hitt was chairman of the Conference USA board of directors before UCF made the jump to the Big East, and Cowen took over the same role until Tulane made the same conference change.